The US said it could launch air strikes and act jointly with Iran to support the Iraqi government in its battle with Sunni Islamist insurgents who routed Baghdad’s army and seized the north of the country in the past week.
The stunning onslaught by militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) threatens to dismember Iraq and unleash all-out sectarian warfare across a crescent of the Middle East, with no regard for borders that the fighters reject.
US Secretary of State John Kerry called the advance an “existential threat” for Iraq.
Photo: Reuters
Asked if the US could cooperate with Iran against the insurgents, Kerry told Yahoo News: “I wouldn’t rule out anything that would be constructive.”
As for air strikes: “They’re not the whole answer, but they may well be one of the options that are important,” he said. “When you have people murdering, assassinating in these mass massacres, you have to stop that. And you do what you need to do if you need to try to stop it from the air or otherwise.”
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said reports of Islamic militants massacring scores of captured Iraqi soldiers after overrunning towns and cities are “deeply disturbing’’ and those responsible for it must be brought to justice.
Ban yesterday warned against sectarian rhetoric that could inflame the conflict and carry grave implications for the entire region.
The Islamic militants who overran cities and towns in Iraq last week have posted graphic photographs online that appear to show their gunmen massacring scores of captured Iraqi soldiers.
Joint action between the US and Iran to help prop up the government of their mutual ally, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, would be a major breakthrough after hostility dating to Iran’s 1979 revolution, and demonstrates the degree of alarm raised by the lightning insurgent advance.
The ISIL fighters captured the mainly ethnic Turkmen city of Tal Afar in northwestern Iraq overnight after heavy fighting on Sunday, solidifying their grip on the north.
“The city was overrun by militants. Severe fighting took place, and many people were killed. Shiite families have fled to the west and Sunni families have fled to the east,” a city official who asked not to be identified said.
Tal Afar is a short drive west from Mosul, the north’s main city, which ISIL seized last week at the start of a drive that has plunged the country into the worst crisis since US troops withdrew in 2011.
ISIL, seeking a Sunni caliphate in Iraq and Syria, is also fighting Syria’s Iranian-backed government. It has support among some in Iraq’s Sunni minority who see the Shiite al-Maliki as both a pawn of Iran and of the US, whose forces ended decades of Sunni dominance by toppling former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in 2003.
US President Barack Obama has ruled out sending troops back into Iraq, although he says he is weighing other military options, such as air strikes.
A US aircraft carrier has sailed into the Gulf. The only US military contingent on the ground are the security staff at the US embassy.
Additional reporting by AP
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